Battle-Worn
by kers
Summary: Juliette finds herself in crisis; friendship comes from an unlikely place.
1. Chapter 1

****

Battle-Worn

Chapter One

"C'mon, Peter, let us go early today," begged one voice from the small circle of students. Three other students chimed in with voices walking this edge of whiny. The man gazed at the group warily. 

"We've still got a lot to discuss about anger management. We were going to do role plays today, guys." It was clear that, despite his protests, he was caving in to the pleading looks of the fourteen students around him. Knowing they had won, the students started to close their notebooks, cap their pens, and slide out of their seats. "Fine, fine," he said, motioning them away. "Free time. Don't be late for dinner, though, okay? Cliffhangers, you guys especially!" The final part was shouted as the last seven kids streamed out of the room.

"Shelby, if you had your way, we'd never go to class," muttered Daisy admiringly. Her fresh-faced friend grinned wickedly. 

"What, you'd rather be stuck there all day?"

"Oh no, no, noooo," her friend argued defensively. "I'm just making an observation. You seem a little evasive, that's all. Avoiding education and all. Fear of becoming an authority figure by gaining knowledge?"

"Jeez, Daisy, go intellectualize someone else," Shelby bantered back. "It's too nice a day to sit around talking about our feelings. I'm a teenager. I don't want to sit in class. I want to have fun." With that, she jogged ahead to the boy leading the group's march back towards their cabins. "Wait up, Scott," she called.

Meanwhile, the group's smallest boy had slowed his pace so he could walk next to Daisy. She watched him, sideways, as they walked, silently taking in his nervous grins and clumsy steps. She managed a tiny grin and let the space between them close by an inch or two.

The groups separated by gender as they approached their cabins. "Shelby, wanna go kick the soccer ball?" asked Scott, as fresh-faced as she. The girl gave an affirmative smile and trotted into the cabin. Once in the cabin she grabbed a pair of sweatpants from beside her bed and dashed into the bathroom to change, flying out the door without a word.

"Ah, young love," mused Daisy sarcastically.

"I think it's cute," commented Juliette childishly.

"You would," countered Daisy.

"Just because I see the good things doesn't mean that's bad," said Juliette petulantly.

"Doesn't mean it's good, either."

Juliette flopped back onto her bed. "You just want that too, that's all."

"What?" Daisy asked, shocked.

"You want to be happy like that. Normal."

"Trust me, that's not normal."

"But it's more normal than you and Ezra." Juliette's voice was sweet, but the words were harsh.

"You know, this really isn't useful for either one of you," Kat, lounging on her own bed, said calmly from behind a book. "You're both a little jealous, and a little resentful, and you don't want to be, so you get upset. At each other. Instead of at yourselves for not being what you want."

"Shut up!" both of the other girls cried in unison.

"Thank you, doctor, for your ludicrous opinions," snarked Daisy. Juliette just glared.

Kat was quiet a moment and then said softly, "Methinks the ladies doth protest too much." Juliette made an exasperated squeak and pulled her pillow over her head.

"How long until dinner?" came her muffled voice.

"It's not like you're going to eat, right? So what do you care?" asked Daisy.

"Oh, shut up."

"Ouch, that wounds me to the bone."

"Forty-five minutes, Juliette." 

"Thanks, Kat." She exaggerated the last word, drawing it out into a two-syllable word.

Daisy glared back. She grabbed one of her books on the tarot off the shelf beside her bed and flounced out of the room.

"Jeez, what's her problem?" Juliette remarked prissily.

"Jules," warned Kat. "Don't get petty."

"You're too perfect, Kat."

"Nobody is, Juliette."

Kat settled back on her bed and was quickly lost in her book. Juliette felt restless; Shelby was always off with Scott, and Daisy was in a bad mood, and Kat was busy. There was nothing to do and nobody to do it with. She could go get Auggie, but if he had wanted to do something, he would have asked her, wouldn't he? Nobody wanted to spend any time with her, not at all. Juliette flipped onto her side, facing away from Kat, and propped herself up on a bony elbow. She slid her sleeve up just slightly, looking at the broad, plump pink lines that were scattered across her lower arm. She rubbed an index finger over several, feeling their pleasant bumps, like a map across her own body. She didn't really enjoy freshly scabbed cuts; they were like gullies and trenches, treacherous and not artful. Not like the smooth ridges that marked her body, fat and healthy tissue that was pink with life. 

Juliette was jolted from her almost trancelike reverie by Kat's voice, loud and insistent. "Juliette!"

"What?" she asked, annoyed.

"I said, for the third time, do you want to go to dinner?"

"Oh—oh, yeah, sure, let me get my sweatshirt on…" Juliette trailed off as she tugged her shirtsleeve down and slid a sweatshirt over her head.

"I swear, sometimes you just disappear sometimes!" Kat exclaimed, shaking her head with amusement.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do, I guess." She balled her fists up inside her sweatshirt, already anxious about facing the dining room.

***

By the time they arrived, the dining room was full of kids milling around, talking, jumping in and out of line and scarfing their food down. Juliette relaxed a small bit; the room was so crowded that she wouldn't be watched very closely. She made a mental note to herself to try to make it to all her meals a little late. Auggie was suddenly at her side. "Hey Jules, there you are! C'mon let's get some chow. I was waiting for you." 

Juliette smiled broadly. At the same time, a group of kids brushed past her and Daisy walked by and tossed her a scowl. Juliette's head began to spin. Where was Kat? Where had all these people come from? She felt like the world was on the verge of tipping over. Auggie grasped her hand and she held it tightly, letting him lead her to the food line. She anchored herself against the counter, sliding slowly along and regaining her composure. She hated anxiety attacks, even ones as mild as this. 

"C'mon queenie, let's move it along." Juliette looked to her right in surprise. Daisy had never sunk so low as to call her "queenie," like Shelby did. With Shelby, the nickname always sounded like a kind of backhanded compliment, since Juliette knew that Shelby didn't completely hate her, but today, coming from Daisy's sharp mouth, the word felt like nothing less than a punch in her stomach. Juliette, looked at the floor and slid her tray along faster, saying nothing while she purposely chose the smallest portions she could find. Something had to make up for this day, this bad day, this day so much like any other. It seemed like all she ever did was feel bad, make mistakes, screw up, hurt other people, annoy them. Juliette sighed, dropping Auggie's hand and following him listlessly to a table. She sat slumped before her food, shoving it around on her plate with her fork.

"C'mon, Jules, eat up. This stew ain't half bad."

"I know, I'm eating."

"No, you're not."

"Are you going to nag me like Peter and Sophie now?"

"No, I just want to make sure you have enough energy to get through the day. To go for a walk later, maybe."

"I have plenty of energy, so you can stop nagging me!" Juliette stomped away, taking her still-full plate to the trash.

"Whoa, what was that all about?" asked Daisy, sliding into a seat next to Auggie, who snorted. 

"I have no idea." Auggie stared vacantly at his food for the rest of the meal, and Daisy silently regretted having chosen to sit next to him.

***

He waited nearly an hour, hoping Juliette would calm down, before stopping by the girls' cabin. Juliette was curled on her bed, staring at the wall. Daisy, Shelby, and Kat were chatting together energetically on Daisy's bed. Auggie stepped in awkwardly. Usually they didn't enter each other's cabins. "Hey, Jules," he said quietly, tentatively. Juliette's eyes remained fixed on the wall. He came three steps closer and the animated conversation across the cabin ceased and the three girls stared at him, surprised and expectant.

"Hey, Jules. Wanna go for that walk now?" He hesitantly stepped closer to the bed, not wanting to go any further into the cabin than absolutely necessary. Juliette remained silent, but her eyes, surprised, followed Auggie into the room.

"Hey, uh," he looked up from Juliette's drawn face to glance at the gathered group of now-quiet girls, "can you guys give us a minute?"

"It _is_ our cabin," commented Shelby. Kat slugged her lightly on the arm.

"Sure, Auggie. Don't be in here too long, though. You know the rules." The girls filed out of the cabin and Daisy stared steadfastly at the back of Shelby's head as she followed her out the door and down the steps. 

Auggie sat gingerly at the foot of Juliette's bed, his hands resting awkwardly on his knees. "You don't want to walk?"

No answer.

"You don't want to talk either, huh?"

Juliette edged her head around to watch Auggie, but she said nothing.

"I'm sorry if I was nagging you, twig. Can't fault a guy for worrying about his girl, can you?"

A glimmer in her eyes and a wiggle in her nose, she shook her head.

***

Meanwhile, the girls were congregated on a picnic table adjacent to the cabin.

"What's up with them?" asked Shelby.

"None of our business," said Daisy.

"Oh," said Kat quietly, "that's a nice out."

"And what do you mean by that?"

"I mean, that way you can shove the problem off—say it's theirs, not yours or ours, and not have to deal with it at all."

"How could this possibly be my problem? It's about Juliette yelling at Auggie."

"No, it's about Juliette being upset. She showed it by yelling at Auggie."

"Same thing."

"No, it's not," broke in Shelby, grudgingly. "And now we're supposed to figure out why the little princess is upset."

You know, Shel, she's a person too."

"Hardly. She's a spoiled brat."

Kat leveled her firm gaze on both Daisy and Shelby before she stood and walked back towards the cabin. Neither would meet her eyes.

***

"Hey guys, how's it going?" Kat asked as she stepped back into the cabin and walked over to stand at the foot of Juliette's bed. Auggie remained at the foot, helpless.

"She's not talking."

"That's okay, Jules. Sometimes we just can't. If you're not feeling better in the morning, let's let Peter and Sophie in on this though, okay?"

Auggie and Kat were both surprised to see Juliette nod. Placing his hand comfortingly on her ankle, Auggie said goodnight. When Shelby and Daisy re-entered the cabin, Juliette was in the bathroom scrubbing her face fiercely. She went to bed without a word or glance to anyone.

***

The next morning, Juliette's mood seemed to have completely lifted. She trotted to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Passing Shelby, she smiled and called, "Good morning, royal subject!"

"Bite me, princess."

"Queen, please. Call me by my rightful title."

The girls walked over to breakfast together, and Peter greeted Kat just inside the doorway, pulling her to the side of the hall.

"How are things going, Kat?" Part of her preparation for graduation was an increased role as a senior student, more responsibility for the supervision and guidance of newer students. She was expected to observe the Cliffhangers, to take initiative in helping others. 

Juliette tried to be unobtrusive as she watched carefully from the corner of her eye, straining to hear the conversation. She saw Kat pause a moment, glancing in Juliette's direction, before replying, "Just fine, Peter. No problems."

"Great," he said, throwing an arm around her shoulders, "you're doing just great." She smiled up at him and they walked over to the meal line.

***

They met for classes, a loud, chattering circle of friends, telling jokes and finding it impossible to sit down to concentrate.

"Hey, hey, settle down. Sit down. Is this how you're going to act every time I've let you out a bit early? Will I need to start running classes overtime to compensate?" The din settled quickly in response to Peter's unusually strict threat. "Good. Let's get started, then." All fourteen students, members of the Cliffhangers and the Ridgerunners, looked up at him, half-bored and half-interested.

"Have you finished the reading?" A chorus of voices replied muffled affirmatives. "Okay, half-finished?" A clearer response came this time. "Okay, I didn't require you to do reading journals or questions this time—"

"Thank God," threw in Shelby.

Peter glared. "Instead, I'd like you to work on a longer assignment."

"Is it too late to do those stupid questions?"

"Yeah, Shel. Tough luck." She stuck her tongue out as he turned his head. "I want you to tell me what kind of a book you would write about your life. We've been reading a series of autobiographies lately, but we haven't been talking much about our own, and they are just as important. You need to know who you are, where you've been, to know where you're going. I want you to work on these, in your journals, over the next week or so, to develop an essay on this. I also want you to think about what kind of biography might be made out of the same material. How can the events and feelings you describe be perceived differently? How does that change the story?"

Fourteen faces gazed at him speculatively, contemplating the merits of this new assignment.

"And, I know we don't all write our best in the same environments, so you've got all morning to work on these, wherever you feel most comfortable. Let me know if you're having any problems."

The students trooped out of the room, loitering on their way to their dorms or the common room, chatting to put off the work for just a minute more. Auggie stayed behind.

"Yo, Peter."

"Yeah, what's up, Auggie? I hear you're doing real good in math lately."

"Yeah, hey, thanks. I've been working on it."

"It shows."

"Yeah. I'm wondering if I couldn't do my assignment in art, you know, since I like that better."

"Well, yeah, Auggie, you're very talented in it and I know you'd rather draw than write most times. But I want to see some writing, hear your words. You've got them in you. Go ahead and illustrate them, complete the picture. But I want you to find your words, too."

"Yeah, okay. I guess I can do that. I mean, I can."


	2. Chapter 2

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Chapter Two

Juliette sat on the wooden steps that led to the road, away from Horizon. It was as far away from everything that she could get. As much as she appreciated everything that Horizon was doing—or trying to do—for her, sometimes it was just a real pain in the butt to actually do the work. She tapped her pen absently on the empty notebook pages before her. "Who am I, who am I, what's my story …" She shut the notebook as hard is she could, though it didn't make much of a sound. "Who cares? Isn't Horizon supposed to make me be a different person?" She stood up and decided to take advantage of the free morning to take a long walk around campus. She needed to burn off breakfast.

***

Across the campus, Daisy was holed up in a corner in the common room, bent over an identically blank page in her own notebook. She sighed, but the writing came easily. 

__

I know that this assignment is meant to make us reconsider our pasts in a more positive light. I'm supposed to look back at what I've lived through and say, "Oh, but it all made me a better person!" I'm supposed to say, "Maybe my parents were drunks, but it helped me be more capable. Maybe my mom did die, but it helped me understand how important living—and good, clean, healthy living—is. I have come out of all of this a stronger and better person." Well heads up Peter, this is all b.s. I've learned nothing from any of it, except maybe to be a real cold bitch, and I hardly see that as an improvement upon my personality.

She sighed. This may not be appropriate, but it was definitely one way of looking at the assignment. Peter would certainly have a lot to dissect from this little piece.

***

Juliette, winded from her double loop around Horizon, decided to really start the assignment.

__

Who I am, or who I think I want to be right now, is somebody. This sounds stupid. Maybe it is. But I used to be nobody, so being somebody is definitely an improvement. Even if it's not necessarily everything I want to be, it's a start. Nowhere to go but up. I know Peter will ask, "What is a 'nobody'? How can your identity be "nobody"? What was it like?" So I guess I might as well ask myself those questions, too. Being nobody meant that I was a different person for everyone. I was my mom's good daughter. My stepfathers' ideal (and invisible) step-child. My friends' perfect friend. A flirt to boys. A teacher's dream. I was quiet when I should be, giggling when I should be, "perky" (I hate that word) and obedient all the time. I didn't have any idea of who "Juliette" was. I was whatever anybody asked of me.

Which isn't to say this created a perfect life for me. I wish it had; that's what I thought it was supposed to do. Instead it just messed things up more. I was never enough of any of those things; too fat, too happy, too smart, too quiet, too loud, too tacky, too uppity. It seemed like everyone was always taking me aside and telling me what I was doing wrong. "Juliette, you need to watch your weight. Your hips are looking like watermelons." "Juliette, don't embarrass us in front of the boys by giggling like a baby!" "Juliette, why are you talking in class? Pay attention." "Juliette, why didn't you get a better grade?" "Juliette, why aren't you going out with friends tonight? Aren't you popular?" "Juliette, please, I'm trying to work." "Juliette, you're annoying." Why doesn't anybody else get taken aside? Why am I the only one who can't do anything right?

"Juliette, you're a spoiled little princess." I can't even escape it here. What's wrong with me?

Juliette stopped, shocked by what she had written. She didn't even know she thought these things. And now, having written them, reading over them again, she felt sick inside. No wonder she could never keep her food down. She had all of this sitting in her stomach instead. She buried the notebook under a stack of schoolbooks, at the bottom where she couldn't see it anymore.

***

Daisy was walking the length of the Cliffhangers girls' cabin. Everyone else was off working studiously on Peter's little assignment, which left her with nothing but her own notebook to stare at. She could turn her back to it for the thirty-seven paces it took her to get to the other end of the cabin. She decided to just stop there, face to the wall, back to the notebook. It was an acceptable stalemate.

__

Okay, I promise to take this seriously now. Or at least to give it a shot (notice I didn't say, "my best shot," because I'm not that devoted to any assignment you could give me. Not yet, anyway. Where I've been is fear. Afraid my parents would hurt themselves. Afraid they'd hurt me—again. Afraid they'd hurt someone else. I hated waiting for one of them to come home. At least when I was in the car, I knew how bad it was. When I was stuck at home—or at school, or at the library, or wherever, waiting for one of them to drive up—I was always so afraid that this time someone would get hurt, this time someone would get hit, this time someone would die. One of them, or worse, a stranger. An innocent. I was afraid I'd be humiliated again. That a teacher or a classmate would see her come in, her hair mussed and her shirt inside out, smiling at me like the goddamn drunk that she was and

Daisy paused; she was getting more lost in this than she wanted to be, and she reigned herself back in.

__

I was afraid, every minute of the day. I might mess something up or one of them might mess something up; it didn't matter. I always knew that there was another shoe about to drop. After she died, it was like—like I could take a breath for the first time ever. The worst had happened. There was no other shoe to come down. That's awful, isn't it? To be relieved when she

She couldn't write "mother," not yet.

__

died? But that's where I was. That's where I am. Trying to figure out how free I am. It wasn't until after she died that I stopped wanting to hide behind the make-up and the clothes, the image, all the time. Sometimes I still want it so bad it hurts; I want to pound on your door and beg for my blackened eyes and dark dresses. Sometimes I find a way to do it even without the formal stuff (charcoal has an amazing consistency). But at least I know that's not who I am, now. Mind you, I don't think I'm really this bizarre L.L. Bean clone that you turn all of us into either, but I know that I'm somewhere in between.

This is exhausting.

Daisy capped her pen and tapped it thoughtfully against her teeth. Should she tear this out? Should she let it stay? She needed to think on this.

***

Daisy, Juliette could see, had not emerged from the girls' cabin. And she couldn't go in there and be alone with her, so she was stuck out here for the time being. All her school assignments were done, except for math. She stared at the books before her. "Algebra or journal….algebra or journal…" she mused. "It's not a fair choice!" Sullenly, she pulled the notebook out again, turning to a fresh page. If she re-read what she'd written, she'd have to tear it up.

__

So I guess where I am is not much farther from when I got here. I still hate myself and I still don't tell anybody and I'm still nothing.

She paused. She didn't really want Peter to read this. Or Sophie either, for that matter.

__

I can't even write those words knowing someone will read them. How can I get better if I can't even tell anyone what's wrong?

She shut the notebook again. This was too much, too fast.

***

Daisy looked up, surprised, when Juliette walked through the cabin's door a few minutes later. "I'm trying to work on Peter's stupid assignment, so if you want to start a fight, you can turn around and sashay yourself back out that door."

Juliette shot her a sour look. "Don't worry, I won't bother you at all." She dropped onto her bed and curled into a ball, her back to Daisy, her face staring at the wall. Her hand reflexively slid up her sleeve, rubbing carefully along her scars. Horizon didn't feel like such a safe place anymore. At least at home she had places to hide. At least at home, when she hurt, she could do something about it. She had a lock on the bathroom door and it was the safest place in the world, her place. Juliette thought for a minute, her head slightly cocked. She turned her body to face the ceiling. The bathroom. She tried to pretend she was swimming in molasses, tried not to run to the stalls. She didn't look at Daisy as she passed and kept her face steeled, a mask, refusing to betray her anxiety and exhilaration.

***

Daisy kept her eyes carefully trained on the notebook before her. Looking at Juliette would only lead to conversation. She was in no mood to make up and be friends, or fight and be enemies. She was mostly in the mood to disappear. Juliette passed by on her way to the bathroom. Daisy resisted a small urge to stick out her tongue, and smiled to herself at the thought. Sometimes it felt good to think like a kid again, even if she couldn't act like it.

__

I was happy at home, in a way. I mean, I was miserable, too—I was running around like the Bride of Frankenstein and eager to show anyone, everyone, how Different I was—but it was familiar, comfortable. I once read somewhere that people can normalize anything. That's why anorexics or cutters like Juliette don't go crazy knowing what they are doing to themselves. It's become normal. Living on eggshells and living with fear running through me became normal. It was just what you did at my house. I don't think I was even really aware that other people didn't live that way. If you had told me, then, I don't think I would have believed you. I'd have thought that the people who said they weren't messed up were just faking it. Not that Horizon does much to dispel that notion; look at what kind of motley crew we've gathered here. Doesn't do much for my faith in the all-American family.

But I know that Peter would argue that no one really is the all-American family. That what we can hope for, really, is something better than what we've lived. Idealistic visions don't do anything but make you wish for something beyond what you possess. We should be happy with what we've got and with trying to make it better. That's what you'd say, right, Peter? So I should hope for a dad who's not always drunk, and Juliette should hope for a mother who doesn't pick her apart, and Shelby should hope for a stepfather who doesn't … hurt her? Is that the best we can do, Peter? Hope for "not bad" instead of "good"? What's the point in that? I'd rather be hurting than wallow in a state of numb nothingness.

Daisy shut the notebook. Pessimism would not get her a passing grade, and it would only piss Peter off. What was the lesson he wanted them to learn from this whole assignment? If she could figure that out, she could write it out sweet as pie and be done with it. As if manipulation ever got her anywhere with Peter.

***

Juliette was crouched on the toilet. "That's very _unbecoming_ for a young lady, Juliette," her mother would say if she saw her. If Juliette did not move, then her mother would say, "That's repulsive, Juliette. Stop being repulsive." She took her feet off the toilet seat and sat down on it. Still gross, but no longer repulsive. Her mother's voice, satisfied, receded from her mind. She shoved her left sleeve up. She had to be careful with that arm, it always took the brunt of the damage. She stared at it petulantly and tugged the sleeve back down. Too obvious. She thought about her ankles. She could scratch them; nobody looked at them. Shoving her right sock off, she silently thanked her mother's obsession with long, strong nails and set to work.

Her ankle was throbbing by the time she was done. She could feel her heartbeat in it. It felt like her center had dropped to that throbbing point on her ankle. She became focused for the first time all day. Everything converged at her ankle. She sat back, tired, suddenly, and breathed deeply. She could get through this day. She might even be able to do it with a smile, now. She pulled her sock up and patted her hair, her face. Everything was presentable. She could go back out and face the world again. 

Shelby's voice petered into the bathroom. "Oh God, Peter's crappy assignments. If I have to learn one more thing about myself, I'm gonna puke." Juliette could hear hangers clattering near the closet nooks. She was changing, or getting a sweater or something. 

"Go away," Juliette silently wished. "Don't come in here."

Shelby's feet padded lightly into the bathroom. "Hey, who's in here?"

Juliette was silent.

"Juliette is," volunteered Dasy from her bed around the corner.

"Bitch," thought Juliette cattily, though she couldn't bring herself to shout it at Daisy, or even to whisper it. 

Shelby paused before a mirror for several minutes, making musing noises at herself. Juliette knew she was playing with her hair, putting it up and down. Shelby hammered on the stall door twice before padding out of the bathroom again. "Gotta come out eventually, queenie."

Juliette glared at her through the stall door. 

Footsteps through the cabin, heavy this time. Boots. Daisy's. The cabin door squeaked open, then clattered shut. Silence. She was alone again. Alone.

Juliette surprised even herself when she pulled her arm up and slammed it against the wall once, twice, three times. She smacked her wrist against the sharp edge of the toilet paper dispenser again and again. Her silence broke and she squeaked out several tiny screams. Her voice grew louder as her strikes grew harder. Everything she'd felt for the past few days, for weeks, came spilling out in the way she cracked her bones and skin against the firm metal surrounding her in the tiny stall.

Then, suddenly, it all twisted from chaos to a dead stop. "Juliette?" came Daisy's alarmed voice. "Juliette?"

Juliette's breath caught. Caught. She was caught. She was too lost in her actions to care. "Go away!" she screamed, growing more hysterical by the moment. "Go away! Leave me alone!"

Daisy rapped sharply on the stall door, her voice tight with tension. "Juliette, open the door. Unlock the door. Whatever's happening, let me in, okay?"

"No! Get out of here! What do you care?" She slowed the abuse on her arm, sniffing, starting to come out of the fog of violence. She didn't like the clarity and stared hard at her purpling arm, then at the tarnished silver of the toilet paper holder, trying consciously to lose herself again. The smashing sped up again.

"I care, I do care… You need to stop this, whatever you're doing. I need to get Peter. Juliette, open the door. Let's go get him together."

Juliette was gone again and did not, or could not, answer. She was utterly entranced with what she was doing. On the other side of the door, Daisy paced anxiously. Something was horribly wrong, she thought. But what if she was overreacting? What if she wasn't? Was it safe to leave Juliette alone when she was like this? She rubbed a hand anxiously across her head. When had the day fallen apart? When had Juliette? The pounding from the stall was monotonous but terrifying. Daisy made her decision and ran for the door, leaping over the steps and heading for the main lodge. She caught sight of Sophie across the grass common area and screamed. She couldn't formulate any words and just screamed. Sophie, along with a crowd of students, rushed her way. Daisy fought to control her breathing and ignored the sudden visions of her mother in the car before her death. _I won't get out of control_, she thought; then: _Who am I kidding? I can't even speak. I am already out of control._ "Juliette! In the cabin!" She turned and ran back, hearing Sophie's anxious breaths follow right on her heels. They burst into the cabin and Juliette was making little screams again as she cried.

"What happened?" asked Sophie firmly, calmly. She was in control. Daisy's shoulders sagged. "I don't know. She just went crazy in there."

"Juliette. Juliette, whatever happened, you need to get enough control of yourself to open that door and let me come in, okay? Stop hitting and slide the latch over, sweetie."

No indication that she'd even heard.

"Daisy. Go get Peter. Run."


	3. Chapter 3

****

Chapter Three

Daisy figured she had set a new record for crossing the campus to fetch Peter, but on the return to the Cliffhanger girls' cabin, Peter still left her far behind. His legs pumped hard in his single-minded approach. He tore the door open and it hung there, half open, until Daisy shut it behind her. Peter was tugging hard on the stall door and, amazingly, speaking in a very calm voice to Juliette, whose responses were tear-muddled.

"Jules, if you can, unlock the door, okay? Otherwise I have to make some noise to get you. He grunted as he wrenched at the door, it's top half bending somewhat to his strength and the lock creaking its resistance."

"Peter, go away, leave me alone, let me go!"

"You're not going anywhere Jules, okay? I just want to see you." He tugged again and a screw popped to the floor.

"I can't, I messed everything up, I always mess everything up, why am I so bad?" Juliette continued but the words were completely obscured by her sobs.

"Jules, you're great, okay? Somewhere inside you know that." He pulled one last time and the door came free. Daisy gasped. Juliette was splayed on the toilet, her right arm resting on the wall beside her, already dark with bruising and with several trails of blood running down from her wrist. Her right ankle was turned out and looked badly scratched. Juliette's hair was mussed and her face tear-stained; she looked haggard. In an instant, Peter and Sophie were in front of the stall, blocking Daisy's view. Peter lifted Juliette up into his arms. "Dais, I want you to go to the main office and tell Steve what's going on. Ask him to call the doctor right away for an emergency, okay?"

Daisy nodded and ran back out of the cabin as Peter set Juliette gently on the bed, Sophie petting her hair back and whispering in her ear.

***

As she ran back to the cabin from the office, sick with anxiety, Daisy spotted Kat.

"Daisy, what's wrong?"

"Juliette. She was cutting, or something, in the cabin."

  
"Is she okay?"

"I'm not sure. I guess. There wasn't a lot of blood or anything."

"Let's go see how she is."

"No," said Daisy, surprised by her forcefulness. "I mean, it's kind of chaotic."

"Okay," said Kat cautiously. "Let me know how she is, though."

"Yeah." Daisy said as she started her jog back to the cabin.

***

Juliette was curled between Peter and Sophie, who were both perched somewhat precariously on her narrow bed. Peter was speaking in low, rumbly tones to her while Sophie rubbed her back. Juliette's eyes were tightly closed and her arm, wrapped in the button-down shirt Peter had been wearing earlier, was resting gently on Peter's knee.

"He's on his way," Daisy said quietly, approaching the trio slowly. "What else should I do?"

"Can you tell us what happened?" asked Sophie.

"Oh. Yeah. Umm, Juliette was outside, working on homework I think, and then came inside. She sat on the bed for a while. Then she went into the bathroom. Shelby, uh, Shelby came in and changed and told her to get out of the bathroom, but she was just teasing. Then Shelby left. A little while later I heard this—this _slamming_ noise, and then I heard Juliette crying and screaming. I kind of figured out what she was doing and when I couldn't get her to come out, I went and got Sophie, and then you, Peter."

Peter nodded, somberly.

"How is she?"

"I'm not dead, if that's what you mean," said Juliette's muffled voice caustically.

Caught off guard by Juliette's ferocity, Daisy stumbled over her words. "I know that—I just—I wasn't sure how you felt—you know, if you were up to talking."

Juliette shifted and lifted her head to glare at Daisy. "I'm fine. I'd be better if you and Sophie and Peter would just go away and leave me alone. I'm okay."

"Jules, you're not okay. We've been over this before. Hurting yourself is not okay, and if you feel like you need to do it, we need to talk about it. It's not a safe thing for you to be doing."

"Okay Peter, whatever." Juliette fell back into his lap like a petulant child, bringing her arm back up across her eyes.

Daisy stood, forgotten, several feet away from Juliette's bed. They all waited there, silent, until the door clattered open and Kat rushed in, the doctor right behind her. Daisy stepped out of his way and he was at Juliette's side, brusquely pulling Peter's shirt away from her arm and turning it this way and that, examining the bruises and cuts and pressing on the bone in several places.

"Mm, well, the arm doesn't look broken. But we'd better do some x-rays, just as a precaution. You're lucky this wasn't worse, sweetie. You could've really damaged this arm."

"Yeah, I really lucked out," bit out Juliette as she brought her damaged arm to cover her face, hissing at the pain as it moved.

"Well," the stern doctor said, turning to face Peter, "we'd best get her to the offices for those and then she can come back here. She seems calm enough now."

"I'll go start one of the trucks. Sophie, will you and Dr. Johnson bring Juliette over to the main drive in a minute?"

Sophie nodded and Peter moved swiftly out of the cabin, oblivious to the presence of Kat and Daisy. Sophie gently eased Juliette to a sitting, then standing position, wrapped her arm in Peter's shirt again and placed a sweater across her thin shoulders, and led her out of the cabin step by step, the doctor trailing behind, his face blank. Kat turned to Daisy when they were left alone.

"_What_ _happened_?"


	4. Chapter 4

****

Chapter Four

It was after dinner and dark when the Cliffhangers gathered on the stairs of the main lodge to wait for the trio's return. The truck's lights put an eerie glow to the trees lining the main drive for several moments before the vehicle pulled into view. Peter idled the engine for a long minute before turning off the engine and emerging from the car. Sophie approached the group, her face grim, while Peter pulled Juliette's limp form from the backseat.

"Sophie, what's wrong?" Kat asked.

"She got upset again, really out of control. The doctor sedated her, gave her some valium, to help her calm down."

They were silent a moment, until Scott voiced the inevitable: "Why?"

"Why was she so upset there? I'm not sure; maybe because she realized that she had done something very serious with consequences she didn't want to face. Or maybe because whatever triggered this incident in the first place is still upsetting her. I honestly have no idea, guys." Her forthrightness was surprising, but not unexpected. Still, the uncertainty of the situation was not reassuring. "We're going to stay with Juliette in Peter's office tonight," she said, nodding slightly as he passed by and Ezra jumped up to open a door, "and we'll see how things go in the morning."

The six students stared up at her, as looking as confused and lost as she felt.

***

"So what do we do?" asked Sophie quietly, arms crossed in front of her, hugging her even though she wasn't cold, in fact was flushed from the adrenaline of the past two hours.

"We can't do much, now," Peter said. "Juliette made the decision for us."

"We can't send her back home, Peter! She's been working so hard. We're getting somewhere with her." 

"If we were, Soph, she wouldn't be hurting herself."

Sophie was silent for a moment, thinking as she paced back and forth in Peter's office, smelling the musty warmth of the fire from the common room. "Doesn't this just show that we_ are_ getting somewhere with her? That we're breaking down her walls?"

"I'd like to believe that, yeah. But it might also show that she's getting worse, and that all our work has done is put her in danger."

"I can't believe that. She's eating better, she's communicating more, she's—"

"Is she? Or are we seeing what we want to see? We forget that Juliette can be manipulative."

"Peter—"

"I don't mean that cruelly. I just mean that she shows us what she wants us to see. If she weren't good at it, she wouldn't be able to hide her problems so well."

"Even more reason why she should stay! She's starting to show us the problems, even if she can't do it safely yet."

"Safety's our main concern here, though. Juliette's safer with people who are looking out for her every minute, always watching her. We can't do that."

"Well that wouldn't help, anyway. Being guarded will just drive it further underground—and when she gets out again, her problems will be even harder to detect. We can help her better than anyone, Peter, by being here if she wants to come to us. By trusting her. By providing a supportive, loving, healthy environment. If she wants to destroy herself, she will. We can't stop her; no one can. We both know that from personal experience."

But should she be allowed to make that choice at her age? Can we make a choice that we know gives her power she might not be prepared to handle? We're not psychiatrists, Sophie, and I'm not sure that we should be messing around with this stuff."

"No, we're not doctors. But we mess around in every kid's life here, and we do it believing that a loving environment can help kids learn to solve their problems. We have emergency care when –or if—Juliette gets out of control again, so I don't see why we need to treat her any differently from any other kid here at Horizon."

"Maybe we shouldn't be dealing with any of them, then." Peter ran a tired hand across his eyes. "Maybe this is entirely too risky."

"Peter, why are you being so defeatist? We've made some real accomplishments here, why can't you see the good we're doing?"

"Because Juliette's right in front of us, showing the damage we're doing."

Sophie faced Peter, hopelessly deadlocked, at a loss; clearly, something needed to be done for Juliette, but she didn't know what. She just didn't want to let her go.

"I need to call Juliette's mom and explain the situation. She may well decide for us and remove Juliette on her own. This _is_ her second episode."

"And if she decides she doesn't want to take Juliette out?"

"Soph, I have to recommend it. I have to recommend intensive psychiatric care, even if it means taking Jules from Horizon. Her health is my first priority, and we're simply not equipped for this kind of situation."

"Will you insist upon it?"

"I don't know." He reached out a hand and clutched her fingers, just for a moment.

***

"She'll be on in a moment. Mr. Scarborow."

Peter forced his head off the desk where he'd been collapsed for forty minutes, waiting for Juliette's mother to get on the line. He waited nearly ten more—pleasantly occupied by testing out every font on his computer—before the crisp, detached voice came on the line.

"Hello, to whom am I speaking, please?" 

Peter could detect real annoyance behind the formality. "Mrs. Waybourne, this is Pe—"

"I've remarried and I go by my husband's name, Coatesworth," interrupted the woman.

"Fine, Mrs. Coatesworth," Peter said, exasperated. "This is Peter Scarborow and I'm afraid we've had a bit of a crisis with Juliette."

She sighed. "What has she done now?"

Peter was taken aback by the tone. Blame had already been assigned, even though the situation remained unknown. "Well—it's not so much that she's done something intentionally—"

Again he was interrupted. "What's she _done_, Mr. Scarborow?" Juliette's mother was clearly losing patience.

"There's been an incident. Juliette seems to have been dealing with a lot of stress lately and we were," he stumbled here, "unaware. This afternoon she had an intense self-injury episode and she had to be forcibly and medically restrained." Here he paused. 

Mrs. Coatesworth sounded, for a moment, tired. "What did she do, Mr. Scarborow?"

"She scratched her ankle, badly, we think with her nails, and seriously bruised her arm. No bones are broken, but it will take some time to heal. Her wrist is particularly severe and the skin was lacerated in several places."

"Where is she now?"

"Here, at Horizon. Our on-call doctor took her into town for x-rays but thought hospitalization was unnecessary for her wounds. She's sedated now; she won't wake up until the morning. We have our psychologist coming for an emergency session in the morning."

"I see."

"We aren't really sure what state she'll be in when she wakes up."

"Yes."

Peter waited for several moments, but Mrs. Coatesworth did not continue. "Mrs. Coatesworth, should we expect a visit from you?"

"No," she answered, "no, I don't think that will be necessary. Juliette is in good hands and it sounds as if she will recover quickly. Thank you, Mr. Scarborow."

Understanding that the conversation was moving rapidly to a close, Peter jumped in with what he knew must be addressed, and addressed firmly. "I'm afraid the situation is not so easily resolved, Mrs. Coatesworth. As you know, this is the second incident we've had with Juliette in regards to her self-injury and it demonstrates a serious increase in severity. Horizon is simply not—"

"Are you ejecting her from your school, Mr. Scarborow?"

"No, not technically, but you must understand that Horizon is not equipped to give the psychiatric care that Juliette seems to need. As a facility we are not prepared to offer the twenty-four-hour observation that her behavior necessitates. I have a list of several excellent juvenile psychiatric facilities that I can recommend."

"Mr. Scarborow, you dealt well with Juliette's earlier outburst—"

__

Outburst? Peter thought faintly.

"—and I am sure you can deal with this one as well." The woman's tone was placating. 

Peter wanted to drop the issue, but thinking of Juliette's frantic screams earlier that day, he forced himself to continue. "Mrs. Coatesworth, I am not confident in Horizon's ability to maintain your daughter's safety. I recommend her removal from our program, in light of her problems."

"Mr. Scarborow, I sent my daughter to your school to receive help. She does not belong in a hospital and I will not send her to one. I trust that between yourself, your staff, the physician, and the psychologist, Juliette's problems are more than manageable. Now, you'll have to pardon me, I must attend to a previous engagement. Please keep me informed about Juliette's health."

The phone clicked before Peter could even lodge a protest. He sat there, motionless, phone still in his hand. He was delighted that Juliette could stay at Horizon, but his conscience gnawed at him—was it really the best place for her? Could they provide the best care for her? Was he doing her a disservice by selfishly allowing her to stay? There was no one to direct these questions to; he was the boss,, he made the decisions, even if they could be life-and-death. The responsibility weighed heavily on him.

***

Sophie found him like that, staring slightly slackjawed at the wall, going over and over the possibilities for complete and utter disaster that lay before him in this situation.

"Oh, no, Peter," she cried quietly. "When is she leaving?"

He turned in his chair to look at her. "She's not," he said, the surprise still new in his voice.

"What?"

"She's not. Her mother doesn't want her in a hospital. Embarrassment, I suppose—but her care has been left to us."

"Peter, that's great."

"Is it? And if we screw up and she slits her wrists, where does that leave us? We can't be responsible here, Soph."

"Peter, you act like this is only a threat with Juliette. Daisy could have done all sorts of things when we went to her mother's funeral. Kat could have died when she was coming to crisis over her sister. Scott could have collapsed under what happened to him. It's a constant threat with these kids, and we need to deal with it responsibly and proactively, but we can't let the threat control us with fear."

"But none of those situations was so critical. Juliette's the only one of the kids here who has and does act on her feelings so violently. She's the only one who puts herself in danger."

"You don't think running does the same thing?"

"No! There's no knife to the wrist!"

"No—just one kid against everything." She drew her arm sharply across the air.

"It's not the same, Sophie."

"I know it isn't, Peter! Juliette's in a critical situation. But between the doctors and us, I think we can help her come out of it."

"Is that what you really think, or just what you want to think?"

Sophie stopped, mid-rant, her arms dropping to her sides. "I don't know," she said softly.

"We don't have much time to decide a plan of action."


	5. Chapter 5

****

Chapter Five

_Juliette's trying to kill something inside her. I know that feeling. Nothing can make the hole inside you go away and you wonder if maybe you could force it out. I'd rather just live with the emptiness, make my whole life so still that it is a stagnant pond. But when something interrupts that beautiful stillness, the ripples go on for ages. Maybe Juliette's gotten lost in the ripples._

God, even I don't get that metaphor. Nice, Daisy, write something stupid while Juliette goes crazy two buildings over. Real sweet of you.

Do you know what this reminds me of? My mom was fighting with my father one afternoon, they were screaming back and forth for ages. She'd left the papers for an important presentation at home and blamed him for it, said he'd moved it the night before so she couldn't find it when she left for work in the morning. I had been up all night, so I knew that really she'd finished it and put it on the kitchen table, but then she started drinking and knocking things around, so it got lost in the reams of clutter she dumped on the floor in her fury. Like an idiot, I thought all she wanted from the argument was to find out what happened to that damn presentation. So I came down the stairs from my bedroom. "Mommy? Mom, I think the presentation is on the floor, with all those other papers." I pointed. "Daisy, if I wanted you to open your goddamn mouth, I would've asked you!" she snarled at me, all the same bending down to pick up the presentation from the scattered stack on the floor. "You did this, didn't you? You wanted to see me make an ass out of myself out work, give my boss a reason to fire me! You wanted me to screw up, didn't you?"

"No, honestly, I just---Daddy didn't do it—" I stuttered, caught, for some reason, off guard by this sudden attack that I should have been able to predict.

"Save it, all right? No. This is the last time that you're going to embarrass me like this. Come on." She grabbed me roughly by the arm and hauled me out the side door to the garage. The stench of the rum she'd had when she got home from the office seeped from her entire body.

"Mom, no, I didn't do it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry mom!" I pleaded futilely. She had made up her mind and nothing I could do would change it. She shoved me towards the front seat of the minivan. 

"Get in."

We drove. I shut my eyes but that made the swerves and sudden stops more terrifying, so instead I settled on fixing my eyes on a far-off point and counting. Every time I got to sixty I knew we'd made it through another minute. I wasn't really scared of her driving yet; I hadn't made the connection between drunkenness and her accidents yet. I was just afraid of what she was going to say or do when we got to wherever we were going. I didn't have to worry.

I was on thirty-three when we slammed into the side of a red Toyota. For a moment, everything was pristinely silent. The pond thing I was talking about, I was there. It was like the world stopped for a moment and finally everything was calm. The impact threw us to the right and I watched the world spin until we came to a rest facing the opposite direction. And then the sound and action faded back in again. Someone was screaming, not me, not my mother, but I couldn't see anything through the shattered windows of the minivan. I moved my arms and legs: all okay. Undid my seatbelt and opened the car door and fell out of it.

Someone lifted me up by my armpits. "Are you okay there, missy?" Some stranger asked. I nodded and gave him a weak smile. How could I get us out of this? What had I done? Where was my mother? I turned back to the car; she was still in her seat, a cut across her forehead trickling bright blood. She looked at me: "What did you do?" she asked before passing out.

I never told anyone about what happened before. I didn't find out until weeks later that it wasn't my fault; it wasn't even hers. The other car ran a red light. She told my father that at the time, but I thought—that she was lying to cover for me. Doing something good for me. 

I wonder if the cacophony has just now faded in on Juliette. It's enough to make anyone go crazy, after that wonderful stillness. 

Daisy re-read the words, tears in her eyes, before she ripped the pages from the notebook and tore them into thin strips, letting the wind take them from the hill on which she sat.

_I feel bad. I turned on Juliette in the last few days, tired of her whining, tired of her fakeness, thinking, I suppose, that my meanness might make her come out fighting, somehow trigger her to drop these charades that she plays. It was a thoughtless idea. Who am I to know how best to help someone? And it's disingenuous to paint myself as this caring friend who was only looking out for Juliette's well-being. I was just tired of her and showed it, even thought I knew it would hurt her._

I'm not so egotistical to think that my treatment of her is what caused her…incident. But I do know, and knew at the time, that it was not something she needed. I'm not sure why I did it despite that knowledge.

You know, I tried to cut myself once. It seemed apropos, given my gothic façade. I took one of the steak knives from a drawer in our kitchen and took it to school with me. I would skip English class sometimes and sit in the most remote girls' bathroom in the building. My teacher was young and new, and I knew the material, so she overlooked my occasional—or not-so-occasional—absences. I think it made her feel like she was being a friend to me. Anyway, I took the knife to school in my backpack—no metal detectors—and sat in the bathroom with it. I put it to my wrist and pressed down. It left a little line of indentations on my skin. I tried again, pressing down while I drew the knife towards me. It hurt. A lot. Four tiny dots of blood beaded on my wrist and I anxiously blotted at them with a fat handful of cheap tissue. They dried up in tiny scabs on my wrist and I pulled my dress sleeve down to cover them. I didn't look at them until they disappeared several days later, leaving only tiny scars that faded quickly. I didn't take any showers that week; I didn't want to see those small wounds. I never did it again. It scared me, somehow, to know that I could do that to myself. I didn't want to know how much further I could push myself.

How far can Juliette go before she falls out of reach?

Daisy sighed, closing the notebook, and went into the cabin. She dropped the notebook on the floor beside her bed and burrowed deep into the blankets, thankful for their heaviness, and slept.

***

Through the tiny holes in the knit afghan she was wrapped in, Juliette could see Sophie whispering to Kat in the doorway. She was thankful that she had draped her head in it earlier; it now gave her welcome shelter from reality. Their words were impossible to discern, but the gist was clear: Poor Juliette. She wondered if it wasn't possible to go to sleep and wake up yesterday, to erase the stupid things she'd done. Of all the stupid things she'd done—and, as her mother never failed to tell her, there were a lot—this was by far the stupidest. The consequences were just now becoming clear. She could be in trouble for this. She could get kicked out of Horizon for this. Get sent home. Get sent someplace---bad. Her short stints in the hospital for her bulimia were not anything she cared to repeat. And it would be much, much worse if her cutting was known. That she knew for a fact. Cutters were sent to psych wards. 

Kat and Sophie stepped out of the room again, pulling the door not-quite shut. She couldn't be trusted alone, Juliette knew that. She wouldn't be trusted for a long time. Sighing, she tugged the blanket off her head and pulled her journal off the table next to her. Everything inside her had to come out somehow.

__

What possessed me? Why on earth did I take such a risk? Why am I so crazy?

Why did I have to be loud? Why wasn't I better at hurting myself?

Peter, I regret what I did, but not for the right reasons. 

I don't deserve to be here. I think you should make me leave. I can't face anyone here anyway. I can't believe I let myself get so out of control.

Juliette stared at the last sentence for several minutes. The storm was inside her, and she couldn't control it. No matter how hard she tried. Suddenly, the futility of her situation settled on her shoulders. The pain was inevitable. Fighting it seemed impossible. She turned the page to start another entry.

_Juliette, I hope you don't think I am betraying your trust by writing in here. I haven't read anything, I just found the first clean sheet in the journal to write on. If you want me to read what you've written, I will, but only with your permission. I don't know how I can help you, so I'm trying anything I can think of. Writing in your journal doesn't feel quite right, but given the circumstances, it seems like all bets are off for what is and isn't acceptable. So I'm in unknown territory here. I think you are, too._

I hope you realize how concerned I am about you. Me, and Sophie, and the rest of the Cliffhangers—we're all very worried. We don't like to know you're in pain. I'm not sure what's beating around inside you, Jules, but I can tell that it hurts terribly. You are not worthless, Juliette, but me telling you that will never convince you of that fact. I wish you could see what a good person you really are. I wish you could stop holing up inside yourself, shutting yourself off from everyone. That doesn't make you safe, Juliette. I've tried it. It only makes the pain worse. It seems better to hurt yourself sometimes than let yourself risk getting hurt by someone else, I know. But most people in the world aren't out to hurt you. The risk is worth it, it really is. 

I wish I knew what was hurting inside you. I wish I could conquer it for you. We both know that's impossible, but I will be beside you every step if you are willing to fight. 

Your mother doesn't want you to leave Horizon, so we've got to figure out the best way to help you. What do you think? What do you need? Part of your job, part of being here, is taking an active role in your recovery. So you've got to figure that out.

We also need to find you an emergency support system. What happened yesterday in the bathroom was preventable, and we're going to figure out how we can head stuff like that off before it gets out of hand. Okay? Now get some rest. You'll need it. We've got a lot of work to do.

Juliette read Peter's entry once; twice. Once again, he utterly floored her. She had no idea how to react. She understood that such was Peter's technique. There were no familiar behaviors to fall on when faced with such a bewildering response. He wasn't yelling at her about her actions and ordering her to stop. He wasn't tearful and begging her to stop. He was just … asking her to try to get better. It was impossible to hate him when he approached the situation from that angle. Impossible to take the defensive, to fall into the roles she knew so well. Still, she wasn't sure how she felt about offering up her thoughts, meager though the journal entries were. She delayed the decision and instead tried to write freely.

_I don't know if I'll let you see this, Peter, and it makes me feel queasy to think about it, so I won't. I'm going to pretend it's not even a possibility, for now. It's not like I _want_ to be like this, you know. It's not like I think to myself, wow, by being pretending not to be me, I could be really miserable! Yeah, right, that's my motivation. This is just the way I _am_, Peter. I just came this way, all messed up. I know you don't think so, but it's true. I can't remember ever not feeling crazy inside. Not feeling like I'm spinning out of control. So even though you can make me eat and make me stop cutting—well, sort of—it doesn't stop me from wanting to, from wanting to stop the craziness inside of me. And I'm not sure you can fix that, that anyone can. It's not like what we work on in group, working on not getting mad at our parents or something. It's just life, my life._

Juliette looked up from the notebook, suddenly despondent. Why was she trying to feel better, if there was no point? She groaned, again burying her head in the mountain of blankets surrounding her. Her breath made the air around her hot and moist and she felt herself growing drowsy. She was startled by a voice.

"Well, well, well. Here's Miss Destruction."

Juliette pulled her head from the blankets like a prairie dog, searching in the now-bright light of the room for Daisy, who was sitting on a chair several feet away, leaning over her legs, elbows on her thighs. Juliette, at a loss for anything to say, simply stared. Daisy, too, seemed to be stumbling.

"Good to see you haven't wrecked Peter's office, too," she offered gamely. Juliette's face turned anxious and Daisy regretted her exaggeration. "No, no, the bathroom's fine. I was just joking." She paused. "It's you that was damaged."

"I'm fine," Juliette rushed to add. "It's nothing."

"Right."

"No, really. I just got all spazzy. It was stupid."

"It was how you felt. It wasn't stupid."

"Well it won't happen again."

"Putting a lid on it won't make it go away, you know."

Juliette bowed her head. "I know. I'll just do it in secret."

"What good does that do, Juliette? How much harder is it to just tell us what's wrong?"

"You should know," spat Juliette venomously, "since you don't tell anyone either. I'm not the only one sitting on her feelings here at Horizon."

"Touché," said Daisy, slumping back in her chair. "You certainly have a point there."

They sat in silence for several minutes, each alternately searching for a way to wound one another and a way to open themselves to each other. Finally, surprisingly, Juliette offered the first branch.

"I've been kind of bitchy, I guess. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you have."

Juliette glared.

"But so have I," continued Daisy, "so I suppose we're even there."

"I wish I could be as … confident as you are," Juliette mumbled.

"Yeah, well, I wish I could be as happy as you are sometimes."

"I'm not really that happy."

"I'm not really that confident."

They sat again, comfortable in the silence, no longer seething with hostility. It was Daisy who chose to break the silence, again after several quiet moments of reflection. "I got so annoyed with you, you know, and I guess I wanted to provoke you. Get you to react somehow, show some spark. Like Shelby does sometimes."

"Oh."

"Obviously, that was a stupid thing to do. I'm not a professional shrink or anything. I don't know anything about how to help people."

"No, that's a crazy thing to say. You've obviously helped Shelby."

"Oh."

"I can understand what you were trying to do. It was just … unexpected."

"What happened these last few days? Why did you get so down?"

"I dunno."

"Some answer there, Juliette. Right. Like Peter would really accept that."

Juliette grew venomous. "But you're not Peter, so what does it matter to you?"

"I don't like to see you hurting. I don't like to see you smashing yourself into walls, bleeding and bruised. Nobody deserves that."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Again, a pause.

"What was it like, before you came to Horizon? What was your life like?"

Daisy sighed. She tried not to think of those days. Of her entire life. "It was … dark. _I_ was dark. I didn't understand why my parents were so erratic, why there was no constancy in our lives. Sometimes they'd be in good moods and we'd go out to eat and see a movie like some perfect television family. And sometimes their moods were too good and they'd be embarrassing. Sometimes they were mean. Sometimes they didn't even want to look at me. And sometimes they wanted to spend every minute with me and tell me how much they loved me. I never knew what was going to happen next."

"Wow."

"Yeah. So I got so it didn't matter what they did. It's like I had a buffer zone and they never even registered. I just got oblivious to it all. And then the buffer zone became the whole world, and it was like I was alone on this tiny patch of land, in the middle of the ocean, and I could see the world, but I couldn't get to it. And nobody could get to me."

"Wasn't there anything good about it?"

"I don't know. I got so I didn't enjoy even the good times with my parents; sometimes I purposely soured them just so it could get bad again, since I knew how to deal with that. When things were good I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it just seemed easier to drop it myself than worry all the time about when it was going to come." She stopped, tired of sharing. "How were your parents?"

"Well, I never knew my dad. And you've met mother. That's it."

"But surely there were good times."

"Yeah, of course. When things go well, they are fantastic. When I do everything right. I know everybody here thinks I'm spoiled, and I guess I am. But I am grateful for what I have. It's just that having things doesn't necessarily solve all the problems in your life, you know?"

"Yeah, I guess I do."

"Having expensive clothes didn't make me thin enough to be happy. And it didn't make me act right or make people like me. And it didn't make me like myself."

Daisy moved off her chair and sat next to Juliette. "You are a good person, you know."

"Yeah, okay." Juliette said quietly, looking away.

"Juliette, I mean it. I can't convince you, but you should believe it."

Juliette was silent and Daisy stared around the room, eyeing the books on Peter's bookcase and the papers stacked everywhere. She looked back to Juliette when she realized her shoulders were shaking. Her head bent down to her chest, her tears falling onto the thin arms wrapped around herself.

"Juliette," said Daisy uneasily, tiredly. Sometimes it felt like every moment she spent at Horizon was full of important conversations, dangerous emotions.

"Don't you understand?" she asked tearfully. "I can't even say anything. Nothing I say is worth anything. I'm so stupid and shallow and … just wrong."

I hate myself and know I'm nothing, but sometimes I get so full---I get so annoyed with someone else and I get full of it, full of the hate, and it makes me shake. It gets more and more intense but if I cut, it goes away. Like a storm that stops suddenly."

"I can understand why that might be appealing. Sometimes I'd like my storms to disappear."

"Yeah, well, now it's like a whole storm of it own. Just like my whole eating thing. What a mess."

"Yeah. Don't think you're alone in making a mess of your life." Daisy raised her hand comically, then sobered. "So. Is Peter … do you have to leave?"

Juliette snorted. "Peter wanted me too. I'm too screwed up to stay here. But Mother wouldn't take me out. The only place left to go is a …well, a real treatment center, and that's embarrassing."

"Oh. Lucky for us."

"Yeah, sure."

"No, really. I'd … be sorry to see you go."

"Oh."

"Are you allowed out of here, or are you being monitored or something?"

"I think I'm under close watch."

"Let me go see if Sophie will release you to my care," Daisy said, "and we can go back to the Cliffhangers?"

"Yeah, okay, I guess that would be fine. I'm tired of lying around in here anyway."

Daisy exited in a walk that was nearly—Juliette was somewhat appalled—nearly a _scamper_. She grabbed the notebook again, opening to a fresh page.

__

I know that things can't be solved right away. It makes me kind of sick, because I know that sometime—tonight, or tomorrow afternoon, or two days from now or ten minutes from now—it's all going to come back and I'm going to feel sick and dark inside and hate myself all over again. 

But sometimes, just for a split second, it feels okay to be me.


	6. Chapter 6

****

Chapter Six

Juliette approached the cabin warily, slowing her steps as they neared it, letting Daisy pull ahead, a human shield to what she had to face. Daisy stopped and waited for her outside the cabin. Juliette's steps grew smaller.

"Come on," Daisy said, trying not to sound exasperated.

"I'm coming," Juliette whispered, her voiced a quiet, desperate squeal.

Daisy opened the door and stepped through. Juliette tugged at her shirt, trying to get her sleeves to cover the bandages, hiding her damaged leg behind the other, forgetting the pants she wore covered the damage. She stared at the floor, humiliated.

"Look who stopped by on her way to the spa, ladies: our very own Princess Horizon!" Shelby's voice was sarcastic but warm and she swooped down on Juliette, tenderly taking her wounded arm and guiding her to Juliette's bed. "Ladies, we need a crown!" Juliette giggled, some of her tension melting away. She gave a stately Princess Di wave to the masses.

Daisy smiled, watching, from the corner by the door, as Juliette twirled and curtsied to Kat and Shelby. Even now, after everything she'd seen with Juliette, Daisy had a difficult time seeing her as anything but a perky prom queen. Her smile faltered as she realized how cold a thought that was.

Kat folded two pieces of notebook paper into thin bands, bending them together into a crooked circle. "Your crown, m'lady," she said with a bow and a smile, handing the paper crown over to Juliette. Juliette grinned back as she sat gingerly on her bed, wary of moving her wounded arm or leg too much. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment.

Shelby, flopped on her bed, her head hanging off one edge and her knees in the air, groaned. "So is anybody getting anywhere with Peter's journals?" 

Daisy rolled her eyes, shrugging off the coldness that she found so disturbing. 

"Peter's assignments are always a joy."

"I think it's helpful," protested Kat.

Juliette groaned. "Kat, you're always so _good_!" she exclaimed.

Kat turned to Juliette in puzzlement. "What d'you mean, Jules?"

Juliette frowned in exasperation. "I spend my whole life trying to do everything right. I have to think about it all the time. And you just _do it_. I wish once you would get fed up or not be able to do something, I don't know."

Kat stared at Juliette, astonished. Everyone did. 

"Juliette," started Shelby, then stopping, with nothing to say, her mouth hanging open. 

Daisy finished the sentence. "You bitch!" she said playfully, with a laugh.

Now Juliette stared, petulantly. "What?" she whined.

The girls laughed and Juliette giggled alongside, wondering whether she was butt of the joke or not. 

***

Juliette felt out of place throughout the next day's activities. She'd been returned to the Cliffhangers' cabin, but was checked twice an hour at the very least. She grew embarrassed every time the cabin door opened and a voice inquired, "Juliette?" Nobody else needed constant monitoring. She felt like a child, a disobedient child, a grounded child.

After morning classes, Auggie pulled Juliette aside from the group and the meandered around the center of campus, in clear view of Peter, who had been quietly shadowing Juliette in addition to the counselor checks.

"Twig, how ya doin'?" His voice was quiet, tender, almost ready to break with sincerity and compassion. It made Juliette feel oddly uneasy. All these eyes on her suddenly, even more so than before. She felt like she was expected to break, had become something so delicate it couldn't be trusted. It irritated her.

"I'm fine Auggie, really." Her voice was terse.

He raised his eyebrows. "People who are fine don't hurt themselves."

"It was a mistake."

"So? It still happened. You still have to deal with it, even if you wish it never happened."

"Leave it alone, Auggie, please?"

"What's bothering you, Jules?"

  
"Nothing! Jeez, drop it!"

"What are you getting so upset at?"

"God, you, all right? Just stop nagging me!"

Auggie stepped away from her, his head hanging. "Sorry. I'm just trying to help you."

"You can't save me, Auggie, so stop trying." Juliette's heart beat hard in her chest. This conversation was a disaster.

"I'm not trying to save you, Jules. I'm just trying to be a friend."

"Well stop, okay? I don't need friends like that." She wasn't sure what was coming out of her mouth. What was this? Why was she being mean? Why did she want with all her heart for Auggie to go away right now, for everyone to go away, to be peacefully alone? The world was overwhelming, including Auggie.

"What are you trying to say, huh? Are you breaking up with me? You tired of me?"

Juliette was silent. She didn't know how to explain herself. She stared dully at the ground. While sometimes she felt an overwhelming affection for Auggie, sometimes she felt empty with him, like a glass Juliette going through the motions. She wasn't sure whether she felt much of anything at all; identifying her feelings for Auggie was therefore impossible.

"Twig, look at me. Look at me," Auggie implored. He stepped back over to her, taking her arms gently in his hands. They stood awkwardly, trying to position themselves so none of the counselors they knew were watching would grow suspicious. 

Juliette fought the tears welling up in her eyes, balling her hands into fists and tightening the muscles of her legs. She felt wound up like a watch spring, about to unleash and snap out at the world.

"Auggie, I can't do this. Not right now."

The hurt flashed in his eyes for just a moment before he steeled them, hard and black. "Okay." And he walked away.

Juliette crumbled, fell to the muddy ground, twisting her legs painfully. She sobbed. For once, she couldn't conceal the pain or channel it into some later destructive act. If she stayed with Auggie, she knew it would be so tempting, so easy, just to disappear. To lose herself. As kind and sweet and encouraging as he was, he couldn't change that part of her that was so devastated that it couldn't peek out from behind the curtain. He helped her come out of herself, to be herself—as much as she could. But now she wanted to be herself completely, and she knew she had to do that alone. But now she wondered, her chest aching from the sadness and the tears, whether that choice has been a wise one.

Her heart pounded in her ears. The tears were convulsive. She felt like the hurt in her chest would blow her apart. Frantic, she sought to gain control over her emotions. She knew a counselor—or worse, Peter—would be at her side in a moment, having seen her collapse. She repeated over and over in her head _calm down breathe calm down its okay deal with this later relax breath one-two-three-four okay_. She wrapped one hand around the opposite wrist, stroking the bony limb comfortingly. A stab of anxiety went through her: was she bigger? Had she eaten too much? How out of control was she? She rubbed her wrist, lulled by the familiar shape. _Be quiet, be calm, be numb_.

It was Peter, of course. He was too kind to leave her to somebody else. He knelt beside her, his hands light on her shoulders, and whispered, "Juliette? You okay?"

Juliette wiped at her wet face. "No, yeah, I'm okay. I just was arguing with Auggie and, like, slipped here or something. I'm fine."

Peter's face was skeptical.

"No, Peter, I'm okay, all right? Can I go to lunch?"

He hesitated. 

"Peter, I'm hungry." She knew that was a lousy card to play, but she played it anyway.

He relented. "Okay. Why don't we meet later this afternoon, though, okay?"

"Yeah, sure," agreed Julietter hurriedly. Peter straightened and pulled Juliette to her feet. She hurried off towards the cafeteria, nodding as Peter called, "don't forget, this afternoon."

***

Lunch was a train wreck. If she could have skipped the meal without calling attention to herself, she would have, but Juliette knew she had been closely observed at meals since the very beginning. Not showing up would put everyone on red alert with her, and that's the last thing she wanted. Auggie sat at a different table and every Cliffhanger watched her, stealing little looks as though she wouldn't notice. She felt like every bite she put in her mouth was being measured. It was excruciating. The tension in her body grew, escalating further even as she plotted to try to reduce it.

When she returned her tray, she tipped one corner over intentionally, bringing a pile of dishes to the floor. She cursed, bending down to scoop everything back up, gathering the dishes quickly before anyone could try to offer their help. Straightening up, she smiled at the kids on dishwater duty. "I'm such a stupid klutz," she said with a self-deprecating smile. 

As she walked back to the cabin, she fingered the knife shoved inside the sleeve of her sweater. Nobody else sat down at lunch and immediately thought of what they could use to wound themselves, did they? Nobody else stole kitchen utensils and used them to slice their skin open. Nobody else was that crazy. She shuddered, hating the idea but needing to torment herself with it. She didn't want to think about what she did, what she was about to do. She wanted to eat, to binge, but that would have to be done in public. She would not fall apart in front of everyone, proving how worthless she was. She would not prove to be the weak little girl they all imagined her to be. She could withstand anything. With that resolve fresh in her mind, her mother's disappointed voice in one ear and her own mocking voice in the other, Juliette started to scratch her hand with the table knife. It was not sharp, it was not an effective weapon, but it hurt. And that's what she thought she wanted just then.

She knew the other girls would be back at the cabin at any moment. She was not to be left alone for too long. Just having the dull knife made her feel safer, calmer. The few stolen moments she had just now didn't matter: there was privacy to be had everywhere: bathrooms all over campus. 

When she heard the noisy chat of Daisy and Shelby, Juliette knew instantly that she could not face them. She could not cope with any more interaction. She slid back on the bed and curled up into a ball, shutting her eyes and wrapping her arms around herself in an effort to find some comfort on such a lonely day.

The girls' voices stopped when they entered and saw what they thought was a sleeping Juliette. She sighed quietly, relieved, as they gathered some books and left the cabin. She pulled the knife from her sleeve and tried to comfort herself, finally giving up and shutting her eyes, trying to wish the world away.

She could pretend to sleep through classes, but she could not skip meals, and she could not avoid Peter. Evening was beginning to fall when Kat shook her arm gently. 

"Juliette. Juliette, time for dinner. Sophie says I have to wake you up, you can't skip any meals. C'mon, Juliette, time to get up."

Juliette opened her eyes, pretending grogginess. "'M up. 'Kay. Thanks, Kat."

Kat brought Juliette's boots to the bed and went to get a jacket, helping Juliette with it as though she were ill and weak. She even held Juliette's hand as they trudged to the dining hall. Though she had not slept, Juliette felt spacy, off-center, as though she were just waking up from a long sleep. It was comforting to have Kat direct her, fill her plate, and take her to a seat. Juliette was tired of making even the tiniest decision.

She pushed her plate away after eating precisely half of the yellow casserole that was slopped across it. She liked neat, even portions. One-half seemed appropriate on a day when she felt half-awake. That drowsy feeling may have been why she started when Peter rested his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Juliette, I thought you heard me," said Peter, sorry for scaring her.

"No, it's okay. I'm just out of it," said Juliette, making a face.

"Ready for our meeting?"

She stared.

"Are you done eating? You pushed your plate away ten minutes ago. Do you want to come to my office now?"

"I don't think he's giving you a choice here, Queenie," interjected Shelby with a sympathetic smile. "I'll get your tray."

Juliette nodded and stood to follow Peter. She stood in the middle of the office as he shut the door, feeling for all the world like a prisoner about to be sentenced.

"What do we need to talk about, Peter?" She decided to take the offensive; he wouldn't expect that.

She was right. Peter seemed surprised by her initiative, and was just a bit off balance. The conversation was starting differently than he intended. "Juliette, we can't just forget what has happened. We cannot ignore the problems you are having here. We need to stay on top of things now, all right?"

"_We_ don't need to do any of that, Peter, I'm okay. I'll let you know if I'm not."

Peter stood for a moment, contemplating this assertion. "Roll up your sleeves, will you, Jules?"

Taken aback, she stood with her mouth dropped open. Found out. She was in deep trouble here. She shoved one sleeve halfway up her arm and thrust it out at Peter, trying to look defiant and annoyed. "See? I'm _fine_." 

She flinched when Peter took two steps to stand beside her and gently slid the sleeve up past her elbow, exposing a scabbed wound. He moved to her other side and exposed the injuries on that arm, too. 

Her eyes welled up, humiliation and anger filling Juliette's chest, her mouth, her head. Her body ached with the feelings and she stumbled back, hitting the couch. She sat down hard, her arms still extended out in front of her like some sort of sacrificial offering. She couldn't bear to look at Peter. She couldn't bear to sit here. Just being alive, just breathing in and out, seemed an impossible task.

"When?" he asked quietly.

"This morning, um, after lunch. Afternoon I guess."

"What did you use?"

"Nothing."

His voice rose. "Juliette, what are you doing? Do you want to get better?"

She glared.

"What did you use?"

Silence.

"Juliette, things can't continue this way. They can't. I cannot let you stay here if you are not devoted to changing. I cannot let you destroy yourself here."

Juliette began to feel very alone and very frightened. Her shoulders shook as she fought back tears, her face wrenched with grief.

"No, no, Peter, don't kick me out! I'll do better, I promise I will! Peter, please."

"Juliette, I'm not suggesting this because I don't want you here or because I think you're not trying. I know you're trying. But it may not be enough to keep you here. I can't in good conscience keep you here if you need more help than I can give. I love you too much to do that."

She bent her head into her hands. Leaving. Forever. No more Horizon, just her and the toilet and her razors and her mother. And an empty, empty life.

"What if I swear, Peter? What if I promise I will never do it again?" She spoke quietly, deliberately. She hoped he understood she was serious, not hysterical.

"How can we ensure that, Juliette? How can we make you safe, so that it really doesn't happen again?" He did understand. He was trying to help. Juliette felt relieved. At least they could try.

She looked up gingerly. "A knife from the cafeteria. That's uh, what I did it with." She looked ahead, past Peter's face, past him rubbing his forehead like a worried parent, past him trying to figure out how to keep her safe from herself.

Peter sat back on his desk, one leg hanging askew from it. He motioned to the couch and Juliette sat, obedient. "Juliette, if you're going to stay at Horizon, clearly we're going to need to set up something structured for you."

Juliette's breath skipped at the word "stay." 

"It was unfair of me to just expect you to come to me if you were in crisis."

"I'm not 'in crisis,' Peter," Juliette argued, giving finger quotes in the air to "in crisis" to accentuate her point.

"Cutting yourself open counts as crisis in my book, Juliette, and at Horizon it's my book that counts."

She glared, but not too hard. Pushing Peter did not seem wise, no matter what he said.

"What I mean, Jules, is that we need to come to you. We can't just expect you to come to us. That didn't work when this all started. We should have thought out a better safety plan for you."

"Peter, it's fine! All the Cliffhangers are watching me."

He stared, an eyebrow raised in mild, cynical amusement. "Not all the time, clearly. And they shouldn't have that responsibility." He caught on to the flash in her eyes at that last word. "And by "responsibility," Juliette, I don't mean "burden." I mean that making sure someone is safe is hard work, and they need to be focusing on their own work."

"So what, am I going to be, like, tied to your wrist all the time now?"

No … I think what we need to do is schedule your day so that you're always with someone. And Juliette, I'm sorry about this, but I think we need to check you every day for cuts. And for things you might use to hurt yourself."

She flared at the last suggestion. "Peter! That's an invasion of my privacy! Why can't you trust me?"

Peter motioned to her arms. "I think you know the answer, Juliette. I'd like to know why you don't trust me."

Juliette was silent, her head down for several minutes. Peter was surprised to see her shoulders shaking. "I don't know," she whispered. He knelt at her side, rubbing her back lightly. "I know it's upsetting, Juliette, and I'm not doing it to humiliate you. But for right now it's what we have to do to make sure you are safe. That's my number one concern, keeping you safe." 

The words were comforting and Juliette's tears slowed. She sniffed lightly, a habit ingrained by her mother: "_Don't snort, Juliette; only pigs sniff and snort._"

"Come on, I'll walk you back to your cabin. Will you promise me one thing, though?"

"Yeah?"

"I need you to try to come to me, or Sophie, or one of the Cliffhangers—who can come to me—when you're upset, when you're getting in trouble. You can write it down, Jules, or you can just say that you need help, but you need to speak up."

"Easy, huh?"

"I never said it would be easy. Nothing here ever is, right? But I need you to put out the effort."

Juliette nodded. She walked next to Peter back to the cabin in silence, letting his presence beside her make her feel protected, watched over. When they entered the cabin, she pulled off her jacket and let it fall to the floor as she made a beeline for the bathroom. She turned on a sink faucet and bent down to wash her face, to drown out the conversation Peter was having with Shelby, Daisy, and Kat about watching Juliette and reporting back to him. She tried to drown out the feeling of incompetence, of childishness, or failure and futility. She scrubbed her face until her fingers were wrinkled from the water.


	7. Chapter 7

****

Chapter Seven

She tried to put a smile on her face when she returned to the cabin's main room, but it was—unusually—impossible. The mask was shattered; she couldn't muster up even a piece of it. 

"So. Juliette's keepers, huh?"

Kat, of course, was the first one to speak, her eyes sad but caring. "No, Juliette. We're happy to help you out."

"Yeah," said Shelby in an offhand voice that nonetheless sounded carefully crafted, "we need a little excitement around here, anyway."

"Or lack thereof," countered Daisy. 

Juliette managed a small smile. There was nothing to do but plow through this. 

__

If anybody read my journal, knew about my life, they'd probably think I'm a spoiled brat. I guess I am. But I'm other things, too. Things most people will never know, I guess, because I never show them. I'm too busy with food or knives or being what I'm not. I don't want people to never have known me. When I'm gone—I don't mean when I'm dead, but like when I leave Horizon—I want people to have nice memories of me. I want them to have known **me**, and not some image of me I thought they'd like at the time. I think that's what I want, anyway.

How do I do that, Peter? You make it sound so easy: "Ignore your mother. Be yourself. Eat. Talk." It's not that easy.

Juliette doubted life could ever be that easy. She was endlessly jealous of all the girls she saw at school whose lives really were that easy, or, she corrected herself, seemed to be. She knew her life had seemed that easy to people. Even Shelby probably still thought it was. It's not like she had a good excuse for being such a mess. _I'm such a brat_, Juliette thought to herself, almost breathing a sigh of relief as she fell back into the comfortable rhythms of self-hatred. She almost smiled as the litany came back to her: _I'm a brat. A stupid, dumb brat. Spoiled. No wonder everyone here hates me. Auggie probably never liked me. I'm not nice enough. Not pretty enough. Not thin enough. Fat. Ugly._ She trailed off in her head as the insults escalated. This was not a good situation. She could feel that in her stomach already. Once she got started, she wouldn't be able to stop unless—unless she hurt herself.

Feeling tenuously renewed determination, Juliette abandoned the journal.

***

Well, if somebody picked up my journal, they'd probably think I wasn't a bad egg. Then they'd see a picture of me as Daisy Goth and they'd probably refine their perception. I'm sure everyone at my old school would describe me as a freak. Imagine a biographer asking all my old classmates about me! "Witch," they'd say; "devil worshipper." I cultivated that kind of image. Once I brought vanilla pudding dyed deep red with food coloring and slurped on it in the cafeteria at lunchtime. "Oh, I just love goat innards," I kept saying to the kids that passed by. God, I was insufferable. Those kids wouldn't even recognize me if I went back now. I think I like that. A fresh start. Could a biography just omit my first sixteen years? I wouldn't mind that.

Daisy paused.

_I know what you'd say, Peter. Our pasts shape us. We should be grateful for what good—even if it's miniscule—has come from them. I'm just not at a point where I want to think about someone looking at my life. My drunk parents. Me. Hitting. My. Father._

God, I feel sick. I'm vile. I never think about that. I never **want **to think about it. What kind of person am I to

Daisy broke off her entry, as her face crumpled and her back began to shake with the violent convulsions that went through her chest. She had no tears to cry, she rarely did; the pain was still there, though.

She stopped suddenly—too late—when she heard boots cross the cabin's threshold.

"Dais? You okay?" Shelby's voice was uncharacteristically tentative.

"Dammit, Shelby! You have the worst timing of any human being on earth." Daisy could not stop her shoulders from shaking, try as she might to stop her body's betrayal. She nearly gasped when she felt the first dainty threads of tears crawl down her cheeks. "Get out of here, would you?" She was being mean and she didn't care. She was embarrassed.

"Daisy?" Shelby's voice grew alarmed. "You're crying? What happened?" She rushed to the bed and sat down beside Daisy, close but not quite touching her friend, aware of the necessary boundaries. Daisy sniffled. "God, you know. Just when I think everything's fine."

"What? What happened?"

"I did. _I_ happened, Shelby."

Shelby looked confused but stayed silent.

"I am a horrid creature. And I have to live with that. I have to live with other people knowing what I did. I have to go on living knowing that I am capable of that and knowing that I hate my parents. What does that make me?"

"A teenager?"

"Right. A 'troubled teen.' A 'Horizon kid.' And where does that leave me in five years when I'm not a teenager anymore, when I'm not at Horizon, when I'm just living my life and trying desperately to fit in with everyone else and pretend that I'm not this rotten person?"

Shelby was taken aback by the vehemence expressed by her friend. Daisy had never expressed such self-loathing before. Shelby realized she never thought too much about why Daisy had ended up at Horizon, about the incident with her father and about the other incidents that almost certainly preceded it. Shelby never though of Daisy's history as much more than annoying parents. 

"Daisy," started Shelby, who then trailed off, at a loss for how to help her friend.

"I know, I need to get over it."

"I didn't say that. That's not what you told me when…"

"Yeah. But this is different."

"How? How is it different? We both did things that we're ashamed of. What we did—that's not so much the issue here. Is it? Is it, when we're both killing ourselves over it?"

"I disagree with you there. We're talking apples and oranges."

"Whatever. Fine. You just sit there with your oranges, torturing yourself. It's over. Things are different. It's you and your dad now and maybe you can save something, still be a family somehow."

"Oh, okay, we'll turn into the perfect sitcom family. With the drunk dad and the bitch daughter. Sure, Shelby." Daisy spit the words out. She wished she could shove Shelby far away from her; her anger—at her father? At herself?—was all-consuming and she was afraid of it.

***

Juliette walked quickly towards the main cabin and the last safe spot in the world she could think of, Peter's cabin. She tried not to let her walk turn into a run, but it was a struggle and she ended up sprinting up the stairs and into the building.

"Peter?" she asked tentatively, peering into the office.

He pulled his feet off the desk and stood. "Juliette, c'mon in. What's up?" He glanced, for a moment, at Sophie, who moved into Juliette's view. Juliette quickly gathered that she had interrupted something and started to back up. "Oh, nothing, Peter. Just—you know, passing by." This time it was Sophie who shot the meaningful look. 

"I was … just on my way to see someone," Sophie said, gathering her coat from the couch and slipping it onto her shoulders. "Juliette, you want to talk, you know where to find me." Juliette, still standing hesitantly in the hallway, nodded unsurely. "Yeah, okay, Sophie," she said, trying to sound sincere, even enthusiastic, but failing. Sophie clasped her shoulders for a moment before moving past the girl.

"C'm'ere, Jules," Peter said, moving to the couch and patting it. "What's up?" He sat back on the desk, one leg hanging askew.

Juliette sat, and stared. Peter let the silence sit between them for a moment and then spoke.

"Is this about what happened earlier in the week?"

"That's a nice way to put it," Juliette spat out, head down in shame, her energy suddenly redirected to her embarrassment.

"How would you like me to put it?"

"When I went crazy? When I hurt myself? When I acted like an idiot?"

"You did hurt yourself, yes." Peter said patiently. "I don't see how that makes you crazy or stupid, though."

Juliette looked up at him tearfully. "Yes, it does, Peter! You don't even want me here! I'm sick, there's something wrong with me! It's just like my mother always told me, it's like I'm-I'm _defective_ or something." She sat back in sorrow. "Return to sender."

"Nobody's sending you away, Juliette. I don't deny that you have serious problems. Your injuries show that you are in a lot of pain. Pain doesn't make someone bad, or crazy, or even sick. It makes you someone who's hurting, that's all. And just like with a physical wound, I'm not always trained or equipped to help heal those wounds."

"So why am I still here?"

"Your mother trusts me and she's willing to let me try to help you." Peter wasn't sure of the best way to describe the situation. He was eager to help Juliette, but he did believe that she could be better helped elsewhere. If her mother had approved, he was certain—well, fairly certain—that he would have asked that Juliette leave Horizon and stay in a hospital, at least for a while. "Are you?"

"Peter, I-" Juliette broke off again. She wanted to go sit in a bathroom: cold, clean, alone. 

Peter stood and moved toward Juliette, kneeling before her and grasping her thin arms. "Juliette. Juliette, focus on me."

Her vision swam for just a moment, barely enough to notice. The bathroom. She wanted to be in the bathroom. Peter's hands tightened on her arms. "What?" She exclaimed, brought back to the moment.

"What's going on, Juliette? You're losing focus. Are you getting out of control here?"

She nodded feebly and tried to fight back the tears suddenly welling in her throat.

"No," she said, countering herself, almost arguing with herself, "no, I'm fine, really. I just need to get some sleep, or something…"

"Or something, Juliette. What do you want? How do you feel right now?"

She screamed at herself inside in an effort to stop the tears that suddenly threatened to let loose. "I feel . . .like I'm falling apart!" she cried. "Like something really bad is about to happen!"

"What bad thing is going to happen?" Peter asked calmly.

Juliette was at a loss. "I don't know! I don't know, but it makes me want to 

throw up, it makes me want to—to—" 

"To what, Juliette," Peter prodded in a low voice.

  
"To hurt myself," she finally sighed, falling back in quiet tears.

"Juliette, you don't have to hurt yourself to feel better. You can use—"

  
Juliette grinned, slightly, as she interrupted him. "I know. I can use my tools."

"Well you can, can't you? You know what a great person you are. You know that you can cope with whatever life throws at you. It's up to you to cope with those challenges or to let them pull you down. Which habits are you going to choose?"

"But Peter—" Juliette protested.

"I know it's hard Juliette. Believe me, I know it's the hardest thing you've ever done. But you can make that choice, and I'll be here to help you through it."

"Peter, I'm so scared." Her voice was quiet, her posture withdrawn, but Peter was happy to see her talking, reaching out instead of falling into herself as she always had before. This Juliette, this sad, scared Juliette was real—there was no masking of her feelings, at last. "It's like I'm never going to do anything right. My mother hates me, nobody at home liked me; my own father can't stand to see me. Even here, nobody really likes me. I'm just _tolerated_."

Peter sat with this information for a moment, realizing how lonely Juliette must feel, believing she had no one to care for her. "Juliette, stop a minute and think about it. Nobody likes you? Nobody gets any happiness from being around you? Do you think you're seeing things as they really are?"

"Yes!" she cried, "Yes, of course I do! Why would I pretend?"

"I'm not implying that you're pretending, Jules; I'm just wondering if maybe your perceptions are a little off course here. Think about it: why does Auggie ask you for help with his schoolwork, if he doesn't value you?"

"Because he didn't want anybody to know about his problems."

"But why _you_ Jules, why not one of a dozen other kids Auggie could have asked? Because he trusted you, Jules—you. Not Shelby, not Ezra, not Scott—you. He saw the goodness in your heart and believed you were the one who could help him."

"That's just school," said Juliette in a soft voice.

"Then why did he run from Horizon with you? Why did he want to keep you safe, if he didn't love you?"

Juliette looked up, confused. 

"I'm not talking Romeo and Juliette here, Jules. I mean he loves you in the way that only best friends can, looking out for you--even if it means not being in your life the way he wants."

"Who told you?"

"Auggie did." Peter decided to allow a brief segway. "Jules, I think it's really good that you're trying to do what's right for yourself. You've gotten so much stronger since you got here; that's what I'm trying to show you. You're able to see Auggie's friendship but you're not willing to change yourself to keep it."

Juliette's eyes ran over with tears again. "Why can't I, Peter? Why can't I just be happy with that? What can't I just do what everybody wants?"

Peter's eyes were tender. "Juliette, nobody can live their lives for everyone else and not themselves. That kills you. It's good that you can't. It's good that you're trying to figure out what you want."

"I don't _know_ what I want! I don't want anything! I just want everything to go away. I want to start over. I don't want to be me."

"Juliette, whatever you feel, it's _okay_. You're allowed to feel whatever you feel. You don't have to just feel what people want you to feel."

"But I don't _know_ what I feel."

"Is anything ever that easy, Jules?"


	8. Chapter 8

****

Chapter Eight

All cried out, Juliette trudged slowly back to the cabin from Peter's office. He had, mercifully, allowed her this journey alone. She needed a few moments to pull herself together before she dealt with anyone else, before she returned to life. She half-wanted to stay nuzzled in this painful analysis, where at least she didn't have to participate in life, where she could just sit back and be miserable and destructive. That, at least, seemed safe.

She was caught off-guard by footsteps suddenly beside her, Auggie's face tentatively smiling, his eyes shy but inquiring.

"Hey there, Jules. What's up?"

_Speak. Speak. Say something._

"Hey," she replied in a barely audible voice.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?"

Juliette's steps slowed to a shuffle.

"Juliette, are you all right?" Auggie's voice grew worried.

She stopped, stared at the wood chips covering the path.

"Juliette," he said, his voice firmer than she had ever heard.

"Um, yeah. I'm okay."

"Where you coming from?"

Moments passed. "Peter's."

"What happened? Did something upset you? Is—are—do you have to leave?"

"No, no, nothing like that. Just, you know, a typical Peter session."

"Rough."

"Yeah." Tears threatened.

Auggie took her hand, gently, and led her over to a pair of trees. She stood away from one, near the path. Peter would be watching.

"Jules, what's eating at you?"

She gave a short, cynical laugh. "What's not?"

"You gotta get past that stuff. You gotta get on with things, you know?"

She nodded and they stood in amicable silence for a long time. Finally, Juliette looked up at him, tentatively. "I'm sorry, Auggie. For everything."

"What's to be sorry about, Twig? You're always so nervous. Chill out, Jules. As long as you're in my life, as long as you're still my friend—I'm happy with that. It's you not being around, or you being unhappy, that I can't deal with."

***

They went to dinner together that night, Juliette having to consciously remember not to cling to Auggie's hand. She could do this on her own. She sat staring at the full plate and tried not to calculate its calories. She tried to dull the roar of her mental calculator by turning to Shelby. "Is it just me or is the cook here getting better?" she asked, just this side of frantic. "I think this food looks a lot better than the stuff a few months ago, don't you?" Her head bobbed several times emphatically. Shelby gave her an odd look but played along. 

"Yeah. Right. This food is much less disgusting, Juliette. Now I feel like vomiting when I look at it, as opposed to projectile vomiting. It takes a real chef to make that kind of leap."

Juliette gave her a nervous grimace as she shoved the first spoonful of potatoes in her mouth, closing her eyes tightly as she swallowed the lot. 

They stuck in her throat, fat and warm. She drank a large gulp of milk to shove them into her stomach, where at least she couldn't feel them so much, even if she still had to think about them. _Spoon up_, she told herself. _Normal people eat more than one spoonful. That's it—not too much, not too little. Don't get greedy._ She cut off that direction of thought and focused on the conversation around her as she forced the spoon into her mouth again.

She ate half the meal and considered it a victory.

***

The next day they had to go out to the climbing wall. Kat walked with her, silent but supportive, and settled Juliette on a rock next to the wall. She did not have to climb. She did not have to do much of anything, lately, except show up. Peter said it was all right to spend her energy focusing on her "issues." Juliette kicked around listlessly off to one side from the rest of the Cliffhangers. They were giving her space. She was back to being poor Juliette, poorsickdelicate Juliette. It was familiar but not comforting. Getting better was a pain in the ass. She wandered away from the rock, careful to stay within the counselor's line of sight, and tried to remember the tree identifications they had learned in biology several months later. It was impossible. She still couldn't tell the difference between a maple and a sycamore.

It was the glint that caught her eye. A faint reflection of sunlight that hit a tree's trunk just so, shining light up at her like a signal or a beacon. The pieces of a broken root beer bottle. Without even thinking about it, she had bent down to the shards and grabbed a long and narrow piece, shaving it deep into the back pocket of her jeans.

***

Her heart beat fast with anticipation and apprehension for the rest of the day. When Sophie pulled her aside after English class, Juliette was certain that she'd been seen taking the glass shard. She tried frantically to come up with excuses, useless reasons which fell away when Sophie said merely that if Juliette ever wanted to talk, Sophie was available. Relieved, Juliette nodded. She ignored the voice in the back of her head that told her to hand the glass over to Sophie right then, to rid herself of the weapon.

She wasn't alone until bedtime, safely locked in a bathroom stall. She stared at the piece of glass. Turned it over in her hand. It was sharp on three sides. She held it loosely, thought about tossing it into the trash. He hand tightened around the glass immediately at that thought. _Okay_, Juliette thought, _I want to use the glass. Why? What would it help?_ Although she winced inwardly, Juliette shoved the glass back into her pocket, emerged from the stall, and went to her bed. She pulled her journal from her backpack.

__

I really want to cut right now. I have this piece of glass right in front of me, this perfect opportunity, and I'm blowing it. Somebody's going to come looking for me and I'll have to get rid of it

Or not.

I could put it in my pocket; nobody would know. Peter and Sophie don't check me for…stuff… every night. I could put it under my mattress and—

I hate thinking this way. So conniving. It's obvious it is wrong, so why do I keep obsessing over it?

I'm tired of this, Peter. I AM TIRED OF THIS SHIT. That's what it is: shit. Stuff that's ruining my life. I want it GONE. I am ready for a change. Ready to eat like a normal human being. To not spend my life in front of, or thinking of, a toilet bowl. To not hurt myself. To stop hurting inside. To stop feeling bad about single thing I encounter. 

I am going to change, Peter.

I think.

Juliette scowled at the journal. She couldn't be decisive, she couldn't take a stand, not even now. She couldn't trust herself to make the change. She couldn't trust herself.

She sat with that thought a minute, dumbfounded.

__

Is that what this is? All this time, all this hatred, all these expectations I have to live up to—and I don't even think I can really do any of it? Daisy would called that a doomed prophecy, wouldn't she? Asking myself to live up to what I don't believe I can do.

Who do I trust—and trust completely?

No one. Not Auggie, not Peter, not even myself.

Is that why I'm going nowhere? Is that why I'm not getting better? I don't believe I can, or deserve to? I don't have any faith in myself. I don't trust myself.

She shoved the journal back into her backpack, down to the bottom, as though she could make her thoughts disappear, and slipped her shoes back on. 

"Where are you going?" asked Daisy, who, unbeknownst to Juliette, had been watching the girl's pained writing.

"Out," Juliette said shortly, but she softened when she saw a hurt look cross Daisy's face. "I, uh, need to see Peter. I need to talk to someone." She stopped, realizing how that sounded. "I need to talk to Peter." She could talk to Daisy eventually, but only Peter would know how to help her with this mess. Daisy nodded. "I'll let them know when they come to check on you," she said. Juliette pulled her coat on and walked purposefully out the door.

Kat came out of the bathroom, wiping her face with a towel. "Where did Juliette go?"

"Peter. I think she needs some help."

"Should one of us follow her?"

"No, I think she's okay."

***

Peter 's office door was closed, locked tight. Juliette began to panic. Her hands shook. She had this piece of glass and Peter was nowhere to be found. What was she supposed to do? She turned to go back down the hallway, back to the girls' cabin, and collided with Peter's chest.

"Whoa, whoa there, Juliette. What's up?"

Relieved to finally be in a position to hand the whole mess over to someone else, Juliette burst into tears. She sank to the floor, not even bothering to maintain a semblance of control. She couldn't: she had no control.

Peter kneeled next to her, concerned, distressed. "Jules, what's wrong? Juliette, are you hurt? Did you hurt yourself?" His hands pulled gently at her sleeves.

"No," sniffled Juliette, trying to let the tears ease. "No, I'm okay. I just, uh, Peter—" she couldn't say it. She pulled the piece of glass from his pocket and handed it to him. Peter examined it, then pocketed it and helped her to her feet.

"Let's go into my office, Juliette. We need to talk, am I right?"

She nodded, mute. He fumbled with his keys for a moment, then led her to the couch. He perched on the coffee table in front of it, eye-to-eye with her. She shut her eyes.

"Did you use this, Juliette?"

"No! No, I told you. I wanted to. I wanted to, but I didn't."

"Okay, it's okay, Juliette." He put his hand on her leg for a moment and Juliette relished its warmth. She needed comfort like air.

"I want to, Peter, I want to so bad. I don't understand this! I just—I just want to _hurt myself_." She dissolved into incoherence again.

"You hurt and you don't understand why, is that it, Jules?"

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. "Yes—no—I don't know!" She tossed her arms up slightly, a gesture of futility.

"Are you scared, Juliette?"

"What?"

"Are you scared?"

"Of what?"

"Of anything?"

"Yes; I'm scared of everything, Peter."

"What? Like what? Name some things."

"I'm scared I'll get fat. I'm scared nobody will like me. I'm scared I have no friends. I'm scared I'm stupid…I'm scared there's something wrong with me…I'm scared my mother—that she, she doesn't like me. Love me. I'm…" she trailed off, eyes blank and sad.

  
"That's a lot of fear in there," Peter said, motioning to her chest. "That's a lot to keep bottled up in there."

"So? Peter, I know I'm a wreck. I could've told you that."

"What happened tonight, today?"

"Nothing, nothing different. I didn't have to do anything; there was nothing to upset me. I found the glass and I went to lunch and classes and dinner and then I went to uh, um, use the glass."

"Were you upset at lunch, at dinner?"

"No. Well, no more than usual."

"Jules, you have these emotions in you all the time—you're scared, upset all the time. I'm not sure you're even aware of it anymore. But part of you is—that's why you wanted to use the glass, isn't it? To get rid of those feelings, to calm down, to feel better."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so." She sat quietly for a moment. "I don't even know what I feel half the time. How can I feel better, then?"

"By working at it, Jules. You know you don't change overnight. If you did, we wouldn't need Horizon, right? I could just pop in for house calls."

Juliette managed to crack a very small grin. They sat in comfortable silence for several minutes. 

"Feeling better?" Peter finally asked.

She nodded. "Yeah, a little. I guess I really needed to be upset."

"You've got to feel the feelings, Juliette. Even if they scare you, even if they aren't pleasant. You've got to get them out of you. You can't get better otherwise."

She looked up at him, honest, wide open for the first time. "Peter," she asked tentatively, her voice barely audible.

"What, Jules?"

  
"I don't think I _want_ to get better."

Peter did not waste time on platitudes; he did not reassure Juliette that she did, in fact, want to improve. It didn't matter that he knew she could—she had to figure that out for herself. Otherwise, she wouldn't ever get better. "What does that mean, Juliette? Explain it to me."

"I—I don't think I can get better. I don't think I can stop doing this."

"You don't think you can. That's different from not wanting to, isn't it?"

"What's the difference?" She bent her feet up on the table in front of her as if to shield herself from something unseen.

"The difference is whether you are motivated or not. If you believe something is impossible, Juliette, you'll never accomplish it. You'll prevent yourself from achieving it."

"You sound like Daisy."

"Daisy's a smart girl."

***

For the first time, she slept through the night without waking. She cried no tears, just fell into bed, exhausted. She woke ready to fight another battle: every day was a long battle. But she was finally fighting back, fighting for herself. She was worth fighting for.


End file.
